Robin Hood Game: Four Ways to Play in Sherwood Forest

1 October 2026

If you want to play a Robin Hood game, there are four good ways to do it today. You can play The Adventures of Robin Hood, a cooperative board game whose hardcover storybook tells the tale as you play. You can fight a two-player duel with Unmatched: Robin Hood vs. Bigfoot. You can lead the Merry Men through a classic stealth strategy game on a Windows PC. Or you can step inside Howard Pyle’s novel as your own character, with a narrator that has read the book and answers whatever you type. Which one fits depends on whether you want a family evening, a quick duel, a tactical puzzle, or a seat at the fire in Sherwood that nobody scripted.

This guide goes through all four, says who each one is for, and ends with how to try the last one tonight without paying anything.

What people mean by a Robin Hood game

The search covers several wishes at once. Most people typing it want one of these:

• A board game for the family. Something two to four people can play together, ideally with the story told as you go.
• A game for two. A head-to-head match that sets up in a few minutes.
• A game on a computer. Sherwood Forest, Nottingham Castle and a bow, played with a mouse.
• Sherwood itself. A way to join the outlaws, argue with Little John and decide for yourself whom to rob.

The table shows where each option lands.

The four options side by side

The claims about the three published games below are as of October 2026, read from Thames & Kosmos’, Restoration Games’ and GOG’s own pages. The claims about the book are read from its Project Gutenberg edition.

The Adventures of Robin Hood, the storybook board game

Thames & Kosmos sells a cooperative board game designed and illustrated by Michael Menzel, whom the publisher introduces as the creator of the Legends of Andor series. Its page sets the scene:

“The year is 1193, and the county of Nottingham, England is suffering under the oppressive rule of the corrupt Prince John and his henchmen.”

The players are Robin Hood and his Merry Men, working together against Prince John’s henchmen rather than against each other. Two things make it unusual. A 216-page hardcover storybook narrates the story and moves the game along, so the tale unfolds as you play. And the board changes as you play: it has panels you flip over to reveal hidden characters, and the publisher says you can move your figures freely instead of along a fixed route.

Pick it if you have a family or a regular group and want Robin Hood as an evening’s shared story, with someone reading aloud and everybody deciding together.

It is weaker for one person on a quiet night, because it needs at least two players. And the story is a written book: your group chooses between paths the storybook offers, so a plan nobody wrote down has nowhere to go.

Unmatched: Robin Hood vs. Bigfoot, the duel

Restoration Games makes Unmatched, a series of two-player fighting games in which heroes from legend, film and history face each other with their own decks of cards. Robin Hood vs. Bigfoot is one of the first sets. Its page describes the two sides:

“Robin Hood and his outlaws excel at ranged attacks and robbing from their opponents.”

Bigfoot, with a Jackalope as his sidekick, crashes in for quick attacks. The set is listed for two players at $30.00, and the publisher says its heroes and battlefields mix with every other Unmatched set, so Robin can later meet someone from another box entirely.

Pick it if you have one opponent and want a fast, tactical match in which Robin plays the way the legend says he should: from range, taking what the other side has.

It is weaker for anyone who wanted the story. Sherwood is a battlefield here. The Sheriff, Maid Marian and the Merry Men’s long feud with Nottingham are not what the game is about.

Robin Hood: The Legend of Sherwood, the strategy game

This is a computer game first released in 2002 and still sold on GOG, which lists it as supported on Windows 10 and 11. GOG’s page frames the story in 1190, with Richard the Lionheart a prisoner and Prince John ruling England, and calls it a stealth-based, real-time strategy game. The features it lists include:

• a non-linear campaign of over 30 missions, from robbery and infiltration to castle attacks and ambushes;
• nine playable characters, among them Robin Hood, Little John, Friar Tuck and Maid Marian, each with their own abilities;
• locations including Sherwood Forest, Nottingham Castle and York.

GOG’s changelog also says it fixed the installers and added windowed mode and cloud saves in April 2025, so the old game runs on a modern PC.

Pick it if you like tactics games in which you watch guard patrols, split your band and spring an ambush at the right moment.

It is weaker for anyone who wants to talk to the characters. You give orders with the mouse, and the people of Nottingham say what the missions have them say.

Playing inside Howard Pyle’s novel as your own character

Almost every Robin Hood game borrows from the same stories, and one book did more than any other to fix them in place. Howard Pyle’s The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, published in 1883, gathered the old ballads into one tale for young readers. Project Gutenberg, the free library of public domain books, marks it as public domain in the USA and offers it as an EPUB or a plain text file, rated easy to read at about a sixth grade level.

The book has more in it than the films. Robin meets Little John on a narrow bridge over a brook, and loses the fight with quarterstaffs. Friar Tuck carries Robin across a stream and then tips him in. Robin goes to the Sheriff’s archery contest in disguise. There are tinkers, beggars, a tanner who beats Robin in a fair fight, and a long line of travellers who are asked to dine in Sherwood and pay for the meal.

The fourth way to play is to step inside that book. You give a narrator the book, and it reads the book before you begin: the places, the people, how each one speaks and what each one wants. Then you make your own character and type what you do. There is no list of choices. You can refuse to cross the bridge at all, bet on the Sheriff’s contest instead of shooting in it, or warn a wealthy bishop before the outlaws reach him. The narrator keeps the world consistent with what Pyle wrote.

This is what LLM RPG does. You upload a book as a .txt or .epub file, and it builds an atlas of that book’s world (characters, factions, places, items and events) before your first scene. The Project Gutenberg edition described above is a file you can upload, so Sherwood is one download away.

Pick it if what you want is to be in Sherwood as yourself, making your own plans, and you would rather start typing tonight than buy a game or gather a table.

It is weaker for players who want a board, figures or a battle to command with a mouse. It is a written story, read and typed. It also plays alone, so it will not replace a family game night.

For more worlds in the same style, see the guides to a Sherlock Holmes game and a Wizard of Oz game. For the wider field, see solo role playing games and text-based RPG games.

What it takes to start each one

With LLM RPG you can play a ready-made world for five turns with no account at all, and signing up adds free credits. The current plans are on the pricing page.

How to start a Robin Hood game tonight

If playing inside the book sounds like your kind of game, this is the whole path from nothing to your first scene.

1. Try it with no account. Open a ready-made world and play five turns. A few minutes tells you whether typing your own actions suits you.
2. Sign up with your email if it does. You get a one-time code, no password.
3. Download the book. Get The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood from Project Gutenberg, as a .txt or .epub file.
4. Upload it. The narrator reads it and builds the world before you play, and you are shown what the reading costs before anything is spent.
5. Make your character. A miller’s son with a grudge against the Sheriff, a cook in Nottingham Castle who hears everything, a forester sworn to catch the outlaws who starts to wonder whose side he is on. You are a new person in the story’s world, so you can be anyone.
6. Type what you do. “I challenge Little John to a match on the bridge.” “I carry a message to Robin that the Sheriff has doubled the guard.” The narrator answers in the book’s voice and remembers what you did, including which purse you lightened.

When another Robin Hood game is the better choice

Be honest about the evening you want. If you have a family at the table, The Adventures of Robin Hood is the one to buy, because its storybook gives everyone the tale together and nobody has to read the novel first. If you have one friend and twenty minutes, Unmatched gives you a sharp duel. If you want to plan an ambush with a mouse, The Legend of Sherwood still does that well.

A written game fits a different moment: you have read the stories, or you are about to, and what you want is to walk into Sherwood yourself and see what happens when you make the plan.